


Appellate

by smilebackwards



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angry Sex, Arguing, Forgiveness, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Semi-Public Sex, divorce court
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 01:12:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6634966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Mr. Murdock.</i> It sounds awkward and awful on Foggy’s tongue. Matt can feel his heart recoil, but he has ten stitches beneath his suit; Matt knows how to hide a wince.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appellate

**Author's Note:**

> I really need to stop bookmarking prompts on the meme.. For [this](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/7552.html?thread=14804608#cmt14804608) one.

Foggy is wearing a suit made of merino wool and he’s upgraded his body wash from the cheap drugstore off-brand to something with subtle notes of grapefruit and citrus, but Matt would still know him anywhere. His heart is a quick, steady thrum and Matt’s never been more grateful for his heightened senses because they give him five seconds of warning to flatten away the pain on his face before Foggy opens the door to the briefing room.

Foggy’s heartbeat ratchets up. “Ma-- Mr. Murdock,” he says, stilted. “I didn’t realize you were representing Mrs. Buchanan.” 

_Mr. Murdock._ It sounds awkward and awful on Foggy’s tongue. Matt can feel his heart recoil, but he has ten stitches beneath his suit; Matt knows how to hide a wince. 

“Mr. Nelson,” he returns, even, or close enough. Only Matt could hear the skip in his own heart. “You have me at the same disadvantage. I understood that Ms. Bryers would be representing your client.”

Foggy takes a deep breath through his nose and his heart rate slowly lowers. “Amita was moved to another case. I’ll be the lead.” 

There’s something in his voice that makes Matt sit up straight. Foggy shouldn’t be handling low-level divorce proceedings. He’s been winning corporate cases left and right. High-profile and high-dollar. Matt wants to ask him what happened, if the kind of bullshit politics they had to navigate at Landman & Zack have bitten into him at HCB, but Matt doesn’t get to do that anymore. He gets to call Foggy “Mr. Nelson” and argue against him and he might as well get started.

“Will your client be joining us?” Matt asks. Foggy used to admire how utterly condescending Matt could be while sounding perfectly polite. Matt wonders how he’ll take it from the other side.

“Mr. Buchanan will be here,” Foggy says, freezingly. “He’s finishing something important at the office.”

Not well, then, Matt thinks, and it’s almost a relief to know that Foggy can still feel something more than indifference when he looks at Matt, even if that something is anger. Matt knows he shouldn’t goad, but it’s for Sarah too. Everything is an ugly points system when it comes to divorce cases. “More important than his wife? Than the divorce proceedings _he_ initiated?”

Foggy doesn’t say anything and somehow that in itself feels like a blow. Matt isn’t the one on trial here but that doesn’t mean he’s not a hypocrite by parallel.

“He’ll be here,” Sarah Buchanan says, softly, from Matt’s right side. She sounds like she’s not quite sure she believes it, like she’s been let down before, too many times.

“Let’s go ahead and get some of the paperwork out of the way,” Foggy says. The metal latches on his briefcase—new, fragrant leather—click solidly as he pulls out the forms. “FL-100 petition for the dissolution of marriage between Evan Francis Buchanan and Sarah Grace Buchanan (neé Wilder) on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Both parties have been residents of New York for greater than six months and there are no minor children involved. Spousal support payable to Mrs. Buchanan is reserved for future determination.” He glances up at Matt. Matt can hear it in the crisp flex of his starched collar. “Any questions or corrections? Do you want to set a date for the spousal support discussions?”

“Any time in the next two weeks should be fine. We’ll work around your client’s schedule,” Matt says. He means it as a truce but Foggy’s fingers tense against the paper. “Everything sounds accurate.”

“Great,” Foggy says, tightly. “Sign on the x’s please.” He puts a pen on the form and pushes it across the table. 

Mrs. Buchanan signs and passes the form along to Matt. He picks up the pen. It’s heavy. A Montblanc. The kind of thing someone in a corner office should have. Completely unlike the cheap Bics they used to keep in a ceramic mug at Nelson and Murdock, that Foggy always complained dripped smudges or dried up overnight.

Matt runs his fingers over the form but the printer ink isn’t raised. He’s not sure if his signature needs to go below Sarah’s or to the right.

“Two inches from the bottom,” Foggy says. “On the left side, below Mrs. Buchanan’s.” He never could stand to watch Matt struggle.

Foggy had sat with Matt for hours, hunched over their tiny dorm room desk, while Matt tried to find a way to make his signature at least legible. “The c is still a little crooked,” he’d said and “Your last name keeps floating away. Try just letting the w flow into the M instead of lifting the pen off the paper.” Matt remembers the warmth of Foggy’s palm as he’d carefully helped Matt trace it out over and over until their hands cramped and Matt had learned the muscle memory. 

Matt signs.

There’s a knock on the door before it’s opened without waiting for an answer. Mr. Buchanan smells like sweat and cotton and cedar cologne. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he says.

Sarah inhales shallowly and Matt knows what she’s going to say. _It’s all right._ He puts a hand on her wrist. You shouldn’t give up leverage just because you loved someone.

He let’s Foggy say it instead. “Your work is important,” Foggy adds.

Mr. Buchanan works for a pharmaceutical company, organizing clinical trials for cancer treatments. Sarah had sounded so proud when she told Matt.

“I agree,” Matt says, mildly. “But your client’s ability to manage a work-life balance leaves something to be desired. This instance of tardiness aside, I believe it was four separate marriage counseling sessions that Sarah arranged and he subsequently failed to attend.” 

“My client felt that his time was better spent working toward a cure for cancer than unnecessarily baring his soul to a stranger.”

“He didn’t feel a sincere discussion of their marital issues was a worthwhile use of his time?” Matt asks. “A relationship is based on openness. On honesty.” The words feel like ashes in his mouth, like he’s downwind of a bridge he set alight. 

“Honesty isn’t synonymous with complete transparency,” Foggy says, and it’s no comfort that he sounds like he’s choking too, that he’s arguing Matt’s side of their story. “My client has a right to his private thoughts and feelings. They shouldn’t be extorted out of him through guilt.”

“Extorted?” Matt says. “All my client asked for was communication. _Two-way_ communication. That’s still all she’s asking.” Matt wonders if that’s all Foggy needs to forgive him. An airing of grievances. An open door. Matt’s been holding himself shut for a long time. 

“Do we really need to rehash everything?” Mr. Buchanan says, sounding a little alarmed at the underlying tenseness. “We’ve been through this.”

“I don’t think we have,” Sarah says and her voice is calm, but there’s something beneath it, like the waiting coals of a banked fire.

“You have yet to explain what differences you consider so irreconcilable, Mr. Buchanan,” Matt says, and then, because he knows how to start a fight, how to lead with a jab to the weakest place, “Is your wife so different from when you first met? Is the attainment of age fifty ‘irreconcilable’?”

“That’s not--” Mr. Buchanan bursts out. “God, Sarah, you don’t really think that, do you? You’re still as beautiful as the first moment I ever saw you. More so.”

“Can’t you just tell me _why?_ ” Sarah says, anguished.

Mr. Buchanan spreads his hands on the table, entreating. “You’re not happy anymore,” he says. “ _I_ don’t make you happy anymore. Always coming home late. Missing our dinner plans, our anniversary, our _life._ ”

“You’re trying to let her go,” Matt says at the same time Foggy says, irritated, “Your solution is to be there _even less?_ ”

They both freeze, suddenly aware that they’ve argued the wrong direction. Or the right one. Sarah’s heel taps the floor nervously, loud in the silence. Matt can hear Foggy’s hands clench and unclench.

“Murdock,” he says. “Can I speak to you outside for a moment?”

“Certainly,” Matt says, standing up slowly and following Foggy out the door. He can hear Mr. Buchanan ask, low, “Do our lawyers know each other?” 

A sink is running in the women’s bathroom, but the men’s is empty. Matt pulls Foggy inside and fumbles for the lock.

There are a lot of things coming off Foggy: anger and arousal, pain and reckless impulse. All of it translates to heat. Matt grabs him by the lapel of his fine new suit, grips his hand tight into the fabric, in the kind of fist he’d use to throw a punch, and drags Foggy’s mouth forward to clash with his own.

Foggy gasps into Matt’s mouth. He bites Matt’s lips, pulling blood to the surface but not breaking the skin. His hands are everywhere.

Everything Matt does lately—and he’s coming to measure lately in years—is a mistake but he’s going to make this one too. He pulls away so he can go to his knees, open the elegant button fly of Foggy’s pants. Zenga maybe, Matt thinks, now that he’s this close. Melvin had tried to educate him on men’s fashion labels once while Matt was waiting for him to stitch up a slash through his uniform from a knife fight but Matt’s fingertips had gone functionally numb after the first thirty fabric swatches.

Matt puts his hands on the trembling muscles of Foggy’s thighs. He doesn’t go slow. He goes down on Foggy like it’s the last chance he’ll ever get. Foggy’s head thunks back against the wall.

When they did this before—before Matt started to accumulate fresh, unexplainable scars and had to take a step back—Foggy was always so careful with him; always let Matt set the pace, never gripped him tight by the hair and _pulled._ Matt knows it was because Foggy loved him but he thinks part of it too was that Foggy saw Matt as fragile.

He doesn’t treat Matt as if he’s fragile now, and maybe that’s because he also no longer thinks of Matt as precious, but Matt’s a lawyer, he knows all about checks and balances, about negotiation. You always have to give something up. And even when Foggy had told him to put the Daredevil suit back in the wacko box, when he'd asked Matt flat out if he was a terrorist, if he’d planted bombs, _killed_ people, it hadn’t hurt as much as when he’d said, _I can’t believe I felt sorry for you._

Still, Matt got his hits in too. He knows he owes a hundred apologies for the lies of omission and all the times he didn’t answer his phone or show up for work, for knowing that getting himself hurt would hurt Foggy too and doing it anyway. Matt takes off his glasses and looks up at Foggy, as much as he can, as he hollows his cheeks. He doesn’t know how to say it any other way anymore, with everything broken between them like a minefield of glass.

Foggy comes down his throat with a moan that can probably be heard through the door. “ _Matt._ ” 

Matt only needs to stroke himself twice before he’s coming too.

Foggy’s knees give out and he slides down the wall until he’s level with where Matt’s kneeling on the ground. Matt climbs into his lap, unashamed, and presses his face into the join of Foggy’s neck. He feels wrung out, purged. “Let’s forgive each other,” Matt says, his breath still coming harsh. “Please, Foggy. _Please._ ”

Foggy puts his hand gently behind Matt’s head, holds him in place. “All right, Matt,” he says. “Okay.”

-

They clean themselves up as much as possible. 

“Christ, Matt, your lips are still so red,” Foggy says, his voice halfway between admiration and dismay. 

Matt rolls his eyes. “Yeah? Whose fault is that?” 

“I thought we were done assigning blame,” Foggy protests. He nudges Matt gently in the side, an extra confirmation that he’s joking.

When the get back to the briefing room, the Buchanan’s aren’t there. The divorce petition is still on the table. Foggy picks it up and reads off, “Potentially reconcilable differences. Gone to dinner.” He huffs a breath. “Huh.”

“Sounds like an okay plan,” Matt hedges. 

“Yeah,” Foggy agrees. “I think we’re going to need some quality wine to have this feelings talk though. Let me take you to this great Italian place I found.”

Matt translates ‘found’ in his mind to ‘can now afford’ but it doesn’t sting the way he expected it might. Foggy deserves nice things. Things that Matt couldn’t give him. And if he wants to share those things with Matt, Matt can put aside his Catholic guilt for one night and enjoy the solid weight of the silverware, the linen tablecloth beneath his fingertips. It’s not like he’ll have to look at the prices.

Matt reaches tentatively for the crook of Foggy’s arm and Foggy immediately anchors his hand with the warmth of his palm. Matt breathes out. “Let’s go,” he says.


End file.
